Host / Presenter

Urban Dictionary Word Of The Day

Watch the Vlog version of this post – or read on.

Every weekday for the past three months I’ve been creating and posting short videos like this one.

You might have seen them on my Instagram, Twitter or TikTok. It looks a bit different than the first one I posted back on April Fools Day.

@ajayfry

#Vaxhole is our first #UrbanDictionary #WordOfTheDay how would you use it in a sentence? Comment a word you’d like me to feature in the future. 👍

♬ original sound – Ajay
Me at 18, sitting in one of the windows along the Great Wall of China.

While that was the first video I posted, it wasn’t the first one I created. I wanted to start a new daily micro-series back in January and I’ve always loved language so I thought a word of the day series might be a good format to try for a few reasons.

There are 170,000 common words in the English language, so I’d never lack inspiration.

As the son of a writer and narrator, I’ve been endowed with a voluminous vocabulary and an ability to enunciate and pronounce the English language with only the slightest hint of a Canadian accent which might prove endearing to international audiences seeking someone to assist their terminological training.

While I’ve never been a teacher, days after I turned 18 I spent a month living in Beijing voicing English language educational videos and in the twenty years since I’ve narrated countless E-learning courses. “That’s incorrect. Please try again.”

So, with that in mind, I picked out some words for the first month, wrote the scripts for the first five and recorded them. I even edited the first one – here’s how it turned out.

Yeah, it’s best I just skipped on this idea for traditional words of the day videos.

I didn’t end up posting it because I didn’t think it was that good. Sure the picture and sound quality are better than most of what you get on social media from independent individual creators, but for an educational series, it wasn’t particularly insightful. It wasn’t funny enough to be considered a comedy series… so what was it? The only thing I knew for sure was that it wasn’t good enough for release. At least, not yet.

Comedian George Carlin. RIP
George Carlin 1937 – 2008

When I was nine or ten, I started listening to George Carlin cassette tapes while going to sleep. If you’re familiar with his comedy you might be shocked to think of a kid listening to his famous bit about the seven dirty words. And if you’re unfamiliar with his comedy, while yes, he was sometimes “vulgar” he absolutely loved to investigate and critique every aspect of our evolving language.

So perhaps it’s no surprise that I’d eventually find my way to marry my word of the day idea, with the Urban Dictionary.

This way I can celebrate and investigate the evolution of our language, while hopefully finding some humour in the juxtaposition of a friendly Mr. Rogers type character and delivery with the subject matter of street and internet slang. 

I love that the Urban Dictionary is contributed to by English-speaking people all over the world. Sure, many terms listed in the lexicon are truly tasteless and toxic. It includes lots of hate speech and terms designed to denigrate, subjugate and divide people. But, there’s also a lot of great, creative, hilarious stuff that can also be strangely unifying.

While I’ll happily accept suggestions for words to cover, so far I’ve tried to only select terms from the official Urban Dictionary Instagram account. I’ll avoid ones that target specific individuals, marginalized groups or are so offensive or raunchy I wouldn’t feel comfortable saying them in front of my friends and family – but maybe as the series develops those rules will change and I’ll always make exceptions to poke fun at authority figures.

Otherwise, I’ll take the provided definition and perhaps cut words out or make reasonable substitutions for brevity, but I don’t significantly alter the provided meaning or example sentence, which I do my best to read verbatim.

My videos were originally just a simple one-take setup, so aside from adding in the subtitles, I figured it wouldn’t be too much work to produce them. I thought I could write, shoot and edit a week’s worth of videos in an afternoon.

I’ve been at it for nearly three months now and I can tell you, it was never just that easy. Also, now that I’ve updated the format, with layered cut-aways include compositing and visual effects, it’s become way more work than I ever imagined.

I’m going to try to continue to make them because I’m enjoying the creative challenge. In less than three months I’ve hit 1000 followers on TikTok without paying for views, followers or likes and I don’t have a small waist, pretty face and a big bank, so I think there’s an audience out there for the series, or at least for me.

I’m hoping to create additional series so eventually, I can release a video in a different format every day. I already have some ideas too, and a bit of writing done, but it’s been an ongoing challenge to find the time to do the pre-production work while also spending so much of the past three months doing significant renovations on my backyard all while producing video content to go along with it.

Entirely redoing our backyard has meant a whole lots less time for video production.

But all that stuff should all be done soon, and in the meantime, I’ll try my best to keep producing Urban Dictionary Word Of The Day and I’ll keep Twitch streaming Monday and Wednesday nights.

I’ll end this update with a big thank you to everyone who has supported the series and my creative efforts so far.

THANK YOU!!

Spooky Feed: When two or more images appear in succession on your social feed that are unrelated to each other but surprisingly similar in content or composition.


OH and P.S I submitted “Spooky Feed” to the Urban Dictionary, it’s a term I’d love to see catch on and gain acceptance in traditional dictionaries eventually – if you’ve watched and enjoyed this video, please go give it an upvote.

The Magic of E3

I can’t remember the first time I heard about E3, but like The Great Pyramids, DisneyLand or the Moon, I presumed it would remain in my imagination as somewhere and something I’d only ever dream of visiting. (Yes, I’ve dreamed of going to the Moon. Still do. Stop snickering.)

Ajay Fry outside of E3 2016
Just outside of E3 2016

But my E3 dreams were realized back in 2010. A few weeks before the event, my producer Cameron told me to get ready because we were going to E3. I was somewhat stupefied. Suddenly I was actually going to E3, the perfect place to celebrate my 27th birthday.

2010 was a great year for an E3 n00b. Microsoft partnered with Cirque Du Soleil to unveil the Kinect for the Xbox 360. (If you’re old school like me, you’ll remember it was originally codenamed project Natal) There was a huge pressline ahead of the giant presentation. Stars like Christina Hendricks, Billy Crystal and that guy from that thing walked the carpet.

Honestly, it was almost ten years ago now and I can only remember those two along with the unforgettably magnificent presentation and how special it felt to be there. Walking out of the event I was in a mystified daze. I was dazzled. Then, like something out of a dream a youtube personality I had a secret crush on just happened to be standing there next to me at the very same street corner. (No, I’m not going to say who, but I’d like to believe that if I was single, I’d have mustered up the courage to talk to her.)

Suffice to say, the spectacle of the presentation, along with the following fancy rooftop party where we got to rub elbows with celebrities while trying this innovative new technology (which never really caught on,) solidified in me a real sense of just how magical E3 can be.

It’s incredibly difficult to look cool while playing the Kinect. Obviously, I somehow managed to succeed.

Of course, the show floor itself is less “magic” and more electrified mechanized mayhem. I’d already been to San Diego Comic Con, so I’d had a taste of American excess, but E3 is on another level. It has the biggest screens you’ve ever seen, the loudest speakers you’ve ever heard and of course the purpose for the entire event: playable demos for an unimaginable amount of exciting new games.

One of my first years at E3, as we were setting up in the Xbox booth, I pointed out to our shooter Andy that Steven Spielberg had just arrived. Spielberg! The man behind so much childhood wonder was now just steps away. Andy started rolling before the words finished leaving my mouth. Then he deftly followed Mr. Spielberg into a private meeting room. In the footage (which is sadly locked up in storage somewhere in Barrie) you can see the hilarious moment where everyone turns to give Andy a confused look. Before they could even ask, he was out the door and returning to us with a big smile on his face. “I got the shot.” Magic.

Andy & Cameron at E3 2010

Over the seven years I covered E3 for Innerspace the magical memories continued. I spotted a childhood hero, Ed Boon, on the show floor and Shigeru Miyamoto in the Air Canada lounge (we even swapped Mii’s on our 3DS’s). I interviewed Reggie, Phil Spencer and countless folks who create the games and experiences that have added magic to the lives of gamers the world over.

Miyamoto in the Air Canada Lounge & Me with Reggie Fils-Aimé
Miyamoto in the Air Canada lounge & me with Reggie Fils-Aimé at E3 2016

The Friday after E3 in 2014, the Disney Interactive team took a group of us Canadian media-types to Disneyland. Somehow, in a roundabout way, E3 had taken me to Disneyland. I had such an amazing day there that I decided to take my girlfriend at the time, Zaira, to Disney World for our two year anniversary, AND that it would be the perfect place to propose. (I went full cheese!) Thanks again E3. I wonder how’re you going to get me to the moon next.

Donald Duck, Zaira & Me on the day I proposed at Disney World in 2014.

Even when things went wrong, E3 was still pretty great. One year we had an interview somewhere inside the Staples center. We didn’t know where exactly but as we waited we got to walk around in the gigantic entirely empty and dead silent arena. It was surreal. Was it that same year when I missed my connecting flight home and ended up starting my birthday at an IHOP attached to an airport hotel in Atlanta? Maybe? It wasn’t so fun then, but it’s a funny story to tell alongside many others that are better told over drinks than posted on the Internet.

Cameron & #HotMike inside the vacant Staples Centre

Five days after InnerSpace was cancelled last May I emailed the press team at E3 requesting a reissue of my press badge. I explained that my show had been cancelled and I’d lost access to my email & the barcode for my badge, but I might be able to attend independently. They told me they’d need documentation proving that I was working with a new organization that meets their minimum press requirements.

Oops. My mistake for being honest.

So, last year was the first E3 I’ve missed in almost ten years.

Feigning exhaustion at E3 2015

While I feel weird to keep writing about InnerSpace’s cancellation (I know, it’s been a year now, and I’m moving on) it has been reassuring to see folks defending Kit Harrington’s recent wellness retreat. To paraphrase one comment I saw online: “If you left a job you’d been doing for ten years you wouldn’t be in great shape either,” that comment alone made me feel a whole lot better about how I’ve been handling the ups and downs of funemployment.

Back in April I started wondering about going to E3 again this year and how to make that happen. I knew I wouldn’t qualify for a press badge but I sent some emails to a few folks looking for guidance. I had some meetings and replies but it looked like it just wasn’t going to happen this year.

Then, weeks after giving up on the idea, a Nintendo Canada rep emailed to offer two gamer badges.

Ajay Fry in a Mario Kart
Mario Kart will always be a favourite.

It’s funny how overwhelming it can be when you finally get that thing you’ve been wanting for a long time. Suddenly the reality that I could go to E3 was before me and I was overcome with anxiety. “Should we go? It’s going to be so expensive & I don’t have a job. What am I really going to do there?”

I’m still anxious about the cost, unsure about what exactly we’re going to accomplish, and potentially unprepared for the kind of self-promotional networking I need to be doing while we are there.

But.

We are going.

So big thank you to Nintendo Canada for the passes (They’re not cheap). Thank you to Xbox Canada, Ubisoft and Activision for continuing to work with me, and to the team at Squad for letting me continue to do something I’m good at (talking on camera about my geeky passions.)

Finally, thank you for reading this blog and supporting me through this time of flux in my career.

I’d like to conclude by telling you what to expect from me at E3 this year, but all I know for sure, regardless of anything else, is that it’s going to be magic.

With my buddy Link at the Nintendo Booth. E3 2016.

Word Lasagna

Here it is. Finally. The second blog post I’ve managed to add to my new website since the relaunch back in March.

My first blog post brought everyone up to date on my life’s adventures since ‘shutting down’ my old website where I blogged nearly daily. The update, entitled “Ready to Share” proved overly ambitious. I haven’t been sharing daily again. In fact, I haven’t shared anything at all in the two months since.

I thought I was ready to share again. Truly. But I must have only meant that I’d put all the right pieces together to be “Ready To Share” from a mechanical perspective. My kitchen and utensils are clean. I’ve got all kinds of ingredients, plenty of time and a genuine desire to get back to baking…

But what?

I have been writing. Writing lots. Writings lots and leaving it all unfinished. Unfinished, unused and unshared.

I know that isn’t a word, but it sounds good so I’m leaving it in. Don’t @ me.

I write a little bit and then I edit it. So I never finish writing and I never finish editing, so I never get to posting, presenting or sharing. There are oodles of documents, scripts, pitches and blogs bursting with creative efforts, all silently awaiting their inclusion within something finished. Something shared.

I’ve learned by watching my gastronomically gifted wife Zaira that if you’re struggling in the kitchen it’s likely because you’re not following your recipe.

Because I spent so long cooking as part of a team, following the recipe of broadcast TV, I’ve struggled to find the confidence to improvise in the kitchen again. I should be throwing pasta at the wall to see if it sticks, but the fusilli keeps looking up at me as if to say “What’s your recipe?”


Like Lasagna, layered content is both deliciously satisfying, and time consuming.

The world is full of bakers and makers and we can all share our digital creations with people all over the world and I want to (and need to) create a new recipe for myself to join their ranks. But I’ve got regain the confidence to really get cooking and to ask people to try my creations. Maybe I’ve been throwing entirely too much pasta, sauce and spices all over the walls in an effort to create something original and wholly satisfying.
But maybe trying to reinvent Lasagna is too tall an order for myself? Maybe I should avoid pasta and stick with pastry? If I want to fight anthropogenic climate change, maybe I should look into cooking bugs?

Zaira encourages me to put out platters of appetizers to see what people enjoy the most.

I understand her reasoning, but I’m tired of appetizers.

My old team and I made appetizers for years. Promotional appetizers. Little wraps around the content the real creators and makers made. No shade or shame on my team though. I’m proud of most of what we did and to do it well involves a particular set of skills.

Skills that I’ve acquired over a very long career. Skills that make me an asset for teams like Squad State. But… If I focus on Esports now, that might be the end of it. I might not look for more, I might not pursue more. But if I don’t. I will look for more. I will find more. And I will make more.

I could talk more about Esports and how I should maybe give myself a break for not ‘sharing’ as much as I’d hoped to by now, because of how often I’ve been working with the great team at Squad. But that’s a blog post for another time.

If the cooking metaphors haven’t made it clear, all I’m trying to say is that I want to create original layered content that inspires deeper consideration, conversation and maybe even action. It isn’t easy and I haven’t been sharing because I haven’t made anything I’d be proud to share.

At least not yet.

But my kitchen and utensils are clean. I’ve got all kinds of ingredients, plenty of time and a genuine desire to get back to baking…

Ready to Share

In the late ’90s and early ’00s I was the only teenager I knew who had a ‘blog’. I’d been maintaining a website (AjayOnline.tv and then AbsoluteAjay.com) complete with an online journal sometime before the term was coined. Not a live journal though. I missed being that “cool” by a couple of years.

A screenshot of Ajayonline.tv, Ajay Fry's website from the early aughts.
My old website. You can tell I’m Canadian because I apologized in every post.

I felt like a digital pioneer back then. From sixteen to twenty three, I was sharing filtered photos of myself, my daily thoughts and artistic creations. The idea that anyone in the world with an internet connection could find me wasn’t common place. It was novel. When most folks found out I put so much of myself online I’d hear “You gotta be careful man – the internet is a scary place.” I never saw it that way. I enjoyed it.

Then, in 2006 just as everyone was getting over their fears and into the world of ‘social media’ with Myspace, I had to shut down my website and clean up my digital presence.

A promotional photo for YTV's CRUNCH of Ajay Fry. August 2006
An early CRUNCH promo photo of me from August of 2006

My new bosses at YTV were polite and clear that they didn’t want angry letters from the parents of curious children who discovered my personal website and any of the not-so kid friendly content on there. Actually my personal website wasn’t all that bad, aside from some “Spooky” photos I’d taken of myself on my web-cam and then edited in Photoshop long before the days of Instagram. Back then “filters” were something I’d have to explain as I edited photos for my friends. In high-school I was the guy who edited video projects and made custom albums for burned CD’s. Gotta have a side hustle, right?

"Angsty" photos of Ajay Fry in the early aughts from his (long defunct) website.
Examples of web-cam photos you’d find on my website in the early 2000’s.

Don’t worry, they weren’t all angsty attempts at ‘art’. Most were silly.

Silly photos of Ajay Fry in the early aughts from his (long defunct) website.
Web-cam photos when I wasn’t “feeling all emo.”

My online sketch comedy series was the real concern for YTV. In retrospect it was some of the most embarrassing stuff I’ve ever done, but I did have a whole lot of fun making it, and we were one of the first ‘digital comedy series’. The Hollywood Reporter wrote an article about us and a couple of Hollywood agents took an interest in us. So it’s hard to regret it.

The cover for the first season DVD of The Not Yet Show starring Ajay Fry.
The cover for the first season DVD of The Not Yet Show.

It wasn’t so easy deleting it all back then. I’d been sharing my life’s journey and personal stories publicly for years. I felt like I was saying goodbye to a large part of myself – but on the other hand, I was replacing it with new skills and creative fulfillment.

I was living my dream at YTV. For the first time in my life I was earning a living by talking to a camera. And! And the camera wasn’t just a web-cam attached to my computer! It was on the end of a jib-arm operated by a professional. The signal was fed to a control room where a surly audio guy cued the pre-recorded lines for the Voice Inside My Head so I could have a comedic back and forth conversation with myself. There was a technical director, who could roll in the short cartoon I’d made at my desk earlier in the week, and my producer Paul, who was happy to let me adapt all the silly stuff I’d been creating for fun in my parents basement in Ottawa into even sillier content for kids across Canada. In my own mind – I’d made it.

Ajay Fry on the set of CRUNCH with his parents Pat & Sharon Fry

So I focused on being the best YTV host I could be. Despite the fact that CRUNCH was the new ‘brand’ for the Saturday morning block of cartoons and I was new myself, it wasn’t long before I’d managed to inspire more conversation and interaction within the CRUNCH section of the forums on YTV.com than there was or had been anywhere else on the website. CRUNCH also overtook Family Channel to become the #1 Saturday morning cartoon block in the country. Given the popularity of our Nickelodeon series like Sponge Bob and Fairly Odd Parents I can’t take much credit, but I like to imagine that my ability to engage our audience helped.

Leaving YTV was the toughest decision I’ve ever made. In 2008 I was offered a job hosting The Circuit, a new weekly entertainment news show for SPACE (which was owned by Canada’s #1 media company, CTV.)

Ajay Fry, Host of The Circuit – 2008

Along with the new gig were a bunch of new challenges: Frequent travel, celebrity interviews, red carpets, moderating panels at conventions & a standard 9-5, Monday-Friday work week.

After a year (and in reaction to the recession of 2008) The Circuit, morphed into a nightly after-show where my co-hosts and I would offer some geeky entertainment news, and talk about the television show that immediately preceded us. It was like a sports analysis show… but for fictional stories we had no relation to aside from a broadcast schedule. So when they originally explained the new format and concept to me, I was… concerned.

I’d only ever been my honest, authentic self online and on TV. With this new format I was still a host, but I also had to ‘act’ as though I enjoyed the TV series before our show. Even if I didn’t. While I did, genuinely enjoy many of the shows, there were a few that I most emphatically did not. I mean, do you even like all of the shows on your favourite channel?

I was finding it difficult because nobody saw what I was doing as ‘acting’ and I had no idea how to bring people in on the performance. The audience wasn’t aware I was becoming more and more like a caricature. They just saw me as that guy on TV, Ajay Fry.

Over the years the InnerSpace continued to morph and found its way back to being a geeky entertainment news show. Along the way “Ajay Fry” became an established representative for fandom and geeks across Canada. If any of the other media outlets within the BellMedia umbrella needed someone to talk passionately about a new movie, TV series or video game or geeky topic they asked Teddy, Morgan or me.

Teddy Wilson, Morgan Hoffman, and Ajay Fry in an InnerSpace promotional photo.
Teddy Wilson, Morgan Hoffman & me.

If something cool and geeky was happening in Toronto we were there. (And possibly hosting it, or almost certainly covering it for InnerSpace)

Whenever I explained what I did for a living to anyone the most common reply I got was “That sounds like the best job in the world.” and I never argued.

In-spite of the challenge of occasionally having to act like I cared about the plot lines of some less-than-stellar sci-fi series, I honestly loved my job and the person I’d become.

On Thursday May 24th 2018 I went into work at BellMedia for the last time. Our entire team was let go. Innerspace was cancelled. For the first time in twelve years I was a ‘free agent’ and no longer employed by one of the big four Canadian media companies. Not long after I’d left the little HR meeting room where I was given a firm handshake and my walking papers I posted this to twitter.

Ready? Really? I didn’t even catch the double ‘the’ in there. Did you?

Today is March 1st 2019. It’s been nine months since that day.

To be honest, I’m not sure I’m ‘ready to take on the world’ (is anyone ever ready for something like that?!)

But I know I’m much closer to being ready than I was that day because…

I’ve finished mourning the loss of the journey I thought I was on.
I’ve finished the major renovations on my new home.
I’ve finished my host demo.
I’ve finished my voice demo.
I’ve finished this website.

I am ready to be Ajay Fry again. I am ready to share myself honestly.

And!

And I’ve still got that web-cam!

Ajay Fry in a goofy webcam photo for his website, in 2019.
And I’ve still got those mad Photoshop skillz.

But seriously folks. I’ve got so much more planned to share with you. I hope you’ll stay tuned.

Thanks for sticking with me through it all, thanks for reading.

Keep on CRUNCH’ing & I’ll see you in the future.